254: COMPLETE YANMAR SD60 Sail Drive MAINTENANCE- Seal, Painting, Flexofold Props & Rope Cutters

Hey guys, here we are in Cote de Genia. We've just finished a haul out. And in that haul out, we've serviced our cell drives, things that you have to do every two years along with the bottom paint. And it was hard to find information on the internet that was detailed, that was really complete to be able to help you through the whole process. So we videoed the good, the bad, the unexpected, the ugly, and showed you what we did because it's not always predictable and how we got our boat back in the water within five days. We are getting staged to start working on the sail drives. We need to scrape off the nasty reef off the raft. Can't even tell what's underneath there. We've gotta get the zinc off of this side. The other side, the zinc is gone. We're not sure why, but it is. It is morning at the boat yard and it is our first morning here after haul out. And this morning, we're gonna try and get the propellers off and get them soaking so that they are ready to go when we wanna put them back on. This thing's been on here a long time in a caustic environment. Gotta, okay, first one's off. All right, so far, so good, babe. All right, first piece is off. Just a light tap. I just wanna be able to get the groove. If I can get the socket on there. Yeah, getting it done. Whoa! Zincs are off. Now we've got the zinc holders to take off. All right, we're starting on the second prop to get it off. And thankfully, we've gotten all the pieces off the other one and they're almost finished sanding. So we'll leave it until they're done with sanding and then we'll start servicing that prop. Trying to use as little force as possible. Two workers on lunch break took pity on us and came over to help us speed up the process of getting the sail drive off. What's your name? Giselle. This is Martillo. Martillo. Good stuff. Aw. All right, sail drive is out. And we have a very different system than Juergen's SD25. We've got some grooves going on right here, which is not good. Getting some advice as to what we need to do about that if we have to do anything. All right, first things first is to get the seals and the O-rings out of the unit. And these are harder, harder than you think. Boy, they're in there. We're at a little bit of an impasse, so we're gonna wait for a mechanic and we're gonna cover this opening so it doesn't get stuff in it and then wait for a mechanic. We're soaking our metal pieces from the boat, the propeller, the rope cutter, in a solution. It's actually a descaling solution for a coffee maker, but you can use barnacle buster. I think there's other things you can use, vinegar. But it's basically to get the marine growth, the shells and stuff off of it. Because we're gonna have to go through and polish it by hand just to get the surface nice and smooth. So it's gonna be harder for stuff to attach to it. Ugh, look at that. Tried to get it all with scotch brite and a bunch of other stuff. So we soaked them in some wheat muriatic acid solution. And after you do that, that really cleared a lot of the calcification that comes from the sea growth. So it was better than the coffee? Well, we ran out of that, so that was, yeah, it was so much better. Coffee stuff is pretty weak. Now, what we do here is after you soak them in the acid solution, you want to neutralize them. So you take water and you pour baking soda in it, and then that is a base that reacts with the acid and neutralizes it. To stop the acid process so it doesn't eat away at the metal. So many things to know. Yeah, it's just really tricky, all this stuff. And you want to get these things super smooth, because when this is super smooth, it's hard for it to attach. Like near a finish, so it cleans up pretty well. Those are our rope cutters. Yeah, these are deadly, man. But these are gonna save a haul out, you know? These are like worth their weight in gold. After Carlos inspected the first drive shaft and propeller bearing support, he went to work dismantling the other sail drive. He's trying to get the screw loose that holds the oil. Wow. So that oil's a little bad, yeah. Rusty. Rusty, that the other one don't have rust. Rust indicate that the water was. Okay. He put in the machine, but don't need, in this case, the main mechanization is just cleaning. Okay, just cleaning. Okay, so rusting on this one in comparison to the other one. We do have some ridges, but not bad on this one. Just needs to be cleaned. There is some water ingress. You can see the rusting. In comparison to the other one, there's no rust on this one at all. So no water ingress. He put this in a special machine and check the shaft. Oh, it doesn't vibrate. Perfect. So he's banging out the seal. Oh, wow. Yeah. He need to remove this piece for put, for make the installation of the. He need to. Take it out. Okay. Special tool. Yeah. Okay. Part of boating is working with other people and sometimes depending on other people and their expertise and you learn, even when they help you learn as you go through these experiences. And we videotape this stuff for you guys so that you can learn also because every issue is different. And really with these sail drives, you don't know what's going on till you get down in there and take a look at it. Like on the port side, I didn't think we had any water at all looking at the transmission fluid from the top. But when we took it out, there was some rust on there and everything. So this is why you, every time you haul out, you service them. This is why boats are high maintenance, but you got to get on it and stay on it because this stuff's important. And we also didn't have the tool to take out the ring that needs to be removed to put the seals in. So this is all good. Yeah. And this is going to hopefully help you so that you will be more prepared in the future or this may not be as much of a surprise as it was to us. Hey, if you like great content like this, hit that subscribe button, share, make sure you leave some comments. We really appreciate you guys. Thanks for watching. Is it better new or is it better new? Okay, Brown. He said the screw for the oil is better to have a new one. Okay, I got it. Carlos is going to take our parts off to the machine shop. At the machine shop, the machine is filled in the grooves on one of the shafts with metal and then use sandpaper to shave it down to size. He also used the machine to ensure the shaft was straight and remove the rust and dirt. Retainers with grease for lubrication and protection. At his house, Carlos installed the new seals and O-rings in the propeller bearing support using the lube that Yanmar Instructions recommends. This is the piece where the retainers go. Ready. Here is the piece to place the retainers. The first retainer that looks out is the one that prevents water from entering the transmission. And the second retainer does the opposite. It prevents the oil from coming out of the transmission. And this one does the opposite. Ready. Change of retainers. This is the new O-ring in the casing. This is the first. And the second retainer. The second O-ring, sorry. Two cell drives that are painted with Propglide epoxy. And it's an anti-fouling. It's super expensive. Can't find it down here. We are gonna use a zinc chromate spray paint. A great thing about that is primer. It's also the sacrificial part, the paint itself. Then on top of that, we're going to do an Interlux 33 anti-fouling. First thing we have to do is sand with 80 grit sandpaper. This anti-fouling so it's smooth. And in some cases it's come all the way off. So possibly it wasn't prepped correctly. And if you look, you can tell we've still got a bunch of growth, the bottom of the growth on there. It's pretty tenacious. Probably gonna have to go down to the bare metal because I think some of this ate through the epoxy. I don't know about up here. You know, it's hard to get up there. And I don't know how. Maybe I can sand. It's gonna be really tough getting up there for anything. So we'll do our best. He's saying this part, you should do the same thing as we did here. The task for the day is to get this as clean as the sail drive itself. And the front of it has to be cleaned as well. So what we're doing to prepare this surface to clean the dust from sanding and also to get better adhesion is applying mineral spirits. That's the first thing we do before we put down our primer. The body of the sail drive is aluminum. Right, right. And maybe when you finish, you can apply this for special protection. Yeah. Because zinc is a special metal. Anodous is in zinc. Because zinc, the corrosion, the galvanic corrosion, sacrifice zinc before all metal. This is the reason why the anodous is in zinc and not in aluminum. Yes, yes. FlexFold does not have their instructions in Spanish. So we're translating online. Bueno. Perfecto. Ah, si. Ah, because it's soft metal. Si. What do you say? Ah, it's stripped. Muy, muy verticalizado. Ah, no. No. That's why we're losing them. Everything was going beautifully until the last step. I guess that's a good thing. The last step is the one that we can fix. And we can actually do this in the water if we absolutely have to. This screw is stripping here. So we need either a longer one or we need to re-tap that. Carlos is working it out. Necesito un nuevo de esto. Si. Brown, we've got to buy a new one of these plates. Now what? To get a measure in 3 feet, this is difficult. Long screw? No, no, no. Let's take a look. Okay, okay. All right, so repair on the fly here. Hoping this works. Hoping that screw is not too long. Oh! Increíble! Wow, Carlos! Muy inteligente! Wow!